Newspaper Hails Creationist ‘Angel of the Cape’

What a Difference It Makes When You Believe in the Bible’s Real History.

Millions of people in Queensland, Australia would have
seen the front-page story in Brisbane’s Courier Mail daily
on 21st December 2002. It was about the dedication and “love
in action” of a young female doctor, Dr Lara Wieland. It talked
of the difference that Lara is making to the immense problems confronting
the Aboriginal people in Kowanyama, a remote indigenous community in Queensland’s
far northern Cape York “gulf” region.

The fact that Lara, who is the daughter of AiG co-founder
Dr Carl Wieland, is a Bible-believing
Christian and a keen AiG supporter, is not incidental, but central to
her life’s mission, as will be seen.

But first, more about the Courier Mail story (and
a related, even larger one inside which featured Lara extensively again
in relation to the problems of fetal alcohol syndrome).

Lara is aware that Christians should not seek the adulation
of the world. She hopes that the unsought exposure will help in the campaign
to stop the physical, social and spiritual destruction she sees at Kowanyama
from alcohol and hopelessness. Many people, including children and infants,
suffer some form of permanent physical disability from being severely
beaten, usually in a drunken rage. Sexual abuse, rape, and suicide have
also been big problems during her term there.

She says that when she was interviewed, she urged that the
story should not focus on her, but on “the people here and the help
they need.” The report acknowledges her rejection of any “flattery”,
but cites Noel Pearson, an Aboriginal lawyer who is renowned for urging
his people to reject welfare and alcohol and help themselves, who compares
her to the late Dr Fred Hollows. (Hollows is an Australian icon, an eye
surgeon who devoted his life to being a voice for the health of Aboriginal
Australians.)

The paper did not print any of Lara’s comments where
she was too overtly Christian, including crediting all her opportunities
and abilities to God. She rejects evolutionary notions of the descent
of man and the racism which logically follows from them, but she believes,
on the basis of the true history of man in the Bible, that we are all
“one blood”. She told the reporter that “all are created
equal, we are one big human family”. The article did quote her as
saying that, though Aboriginal people might have different cultures, “they
are the same as the rest of us and [referring to the lack of many basic
medical facilities] they are entitled to everything the rest of Australia
has”.

Lara knows that what she is seeing is in part a display
of the sin nature of humankind, aggravated immensely by complex social
and cultural factors, at the forefront of which is the role played by
alcohol in the society. But she also has no doubt that the racist legacies
of Darwinian thinking have played a big role in the way that this community’s
problems have been tolerated for so long with so little concern by the
rest of Australia. Lara has also seen firsthand evidence of something
which has been acknowledged by Aboriginal leaders such as Pearson recently.
Namely, that the “trendy lefty” theories of social reformers
in the 60s and 70s have failed. These held that a major part of the problem
in the communities was the past influence of the church and missionaries.
The answers supposedly lay in eradicating these, removing all restraints,
and encouraging only traditional Aboriginal culture. However, Pearson
grew up on a Lutheran mission station. He says that even though there
were problems of excessive patronizing and so on, compared to the subsequent
social disaster, those were definitely the “good old days”.
This makes perfect sense to Lara, whose robust Biblical worldview permeates
all her actions.

In the accompanying article on fetal alcohol syndrome, Lara’s
pro-life, Biblical views were clearly seen when she described the child
inside the womb as the most vulnerable person in society. Strongly supportive
of new community measures to clamp down on alcohol, she says in the article
that she hopes that these will not be sidetracked by arguments about people’s
“right to drink”, but that the focus will be on the vulnerable
who are suffering.

In an exclusive follow-up interview with Answers in Genesis,
Lara said that she is immensely supportive of this ministry, which has
been a part of her life from early childhood. “I remember when my
Dad started Creation
magazine in our sunroom in South Australia, typing away at his electric
typewriter, because he had such a passion for this subject. My sister
and I were brought up to see the world through the ‘glasses’
of true history. So even when we went through periods of some rebellion
as teenagers and so on, we never once doubted that there was a Creator,
and we really knew that the Bible was His Word. We could never
fall back on evolution, or ‘millions of years’, as an excuse
to reject God, to pretend He didn’t exist, or didn’t mean
what He said, or to push Him into the background.”

Lara’s husband, Ron Gillespie (as is common in Australian
medical circles, Lara keeps her maiden name for professional use) became
a Christian largely through creation ministry. A key factor in his conversion,
prior to their marriage, was helping set up and carry the books when Lara’s
father, Carl, was doing a creation speaking tour of Far North Queensland.
“It meant Ron had to hear the message of the authority of the Bible
over and over, night after night”, says Lara with a smile. “And
my Dad’s same jokes, unfortunately”, she adds with an impish
grin.

Lara’s father Carl says that when he went to visit
her recently in Kowanyama, like the secular newspaper reporter, he, too,
was struck by the community affection for their “Dr Lara”.
He says, “Just walking around, there were all these dear children,
and every one of them would drop everything to wave, talk to, and even
cuddle her.” Carl was also struck by the immensity of the community’s
problems, and by the lack of facilities which the rest of Australia takes
for granted. Acknowledging that much money has been spent, he says that
the problem is that “it doesn’t seem to be getting to where
it should be, thanks to human sin.”

While there, he and Lara spoke with the handful of other
Christians who are also struggling to start a flame of true Gospel hope
and witness among this traumatized people. Carl says, “One young
Aboriginal man, the son of a pastor, had deliberately moved there to work
as a tradesman to reach the people for Christ.

“His eyes lit up when I gave a mini-version of the
‘One Blood’ message, and related it to the true history of
Aboriginal people in Australia. He said, ‘This is what we need;
it restores the people to a position of dignity, and tells them the truth
about where they and everything else fit together, so it opens the door
to the only real hope, the Gospel, Jesus Christ.’

“He was excited about trying to find a way to make
it as visual as possible in his own outreach work, because “that’s
what Aboriginal people are used to and can relate to.” (Lara subsequently
asked for a set of AiG Powerpoint illustrations on the “one blood”
issue, so she could use them up there.)

Carl says, “Seeing all those things, Lara’s
giving and receiving love, and knowing how she is working to establish
a Christian witness there as well, was a greater thrill than if she had
been given some Nobel prize. I felt immensely blessed by the Lord to see
that. I want to just pass on to as many parents as possible how important
it is that their children truly understand the Biblical ‘big picture’,
that they are rooted and grounded in a truth which permeates all of life,
not just something to make them feel good on Sundays.”

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Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. We focus on providing answers to questions about the Bible—particularly the book of Genesis—regarding key issues such as creation, evolution, science, and the age of the earth.